University Of Texas Rio Grande Valley Research Articles

GUT BACTERIAL DIVERSITY BETWEEN POLYGRID LAND SNAILS REFLECT ENVIRONMENTAL DIFFERENCES

GUT BACTERIAL DIVERSITY BETWEEN POLYGRID LAND SNAILS REFLECT ENVIRONMENTAL DIFFERENCES

Biomedical Freshman Research Initiative: A Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

ABSTRACT The Biomedical Freshman Research Initiative (BFRI) is a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), a hispanic-serving institution. Our analysis showed that BFRI participation was associated with retention in the BS in Biomedical Science program and at UTRGV. No significant difference in academic achievement and graduation in 4 years was observed. The results from this study suggest that BFRI is a promising avenue to provide more opportunities for students to be exposed to and participate in research early on and retain them in the science pipeline at a lower cost and manpower.

Nuestra Gloria The Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Celebrates the 30th Anniversary of the Publication of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

2017 was a significant year in Chicanx, queer, feminist, and American literary history, as it marked the 30th anniversary of the publication of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. One of the most influential books of the twentieth century, Borderlands brings forth nuanced concepts of borders and the importance of the identities shaped by them—physical, cultural, or otherwise. The book has paved the way for exploration and healing for many Chicanxs, people of color, individuals of all gender identities and sexual preferences, and everyone who has proximity to any type of border. Recognizing how Borderlands grounds a wide range of people, the Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) saw it fitting to celebrate the life and work of Gloria Anzaldúa in a special way. Annually, CMAS holds a celebration of Anzaldúa, El Retorno, organized by Professor of Creative Writing and Associate Director of CMAS Emmy Pérez. However, CMAS dedicated the entire academic school year of 2017-2018 to Anzaldúa—specifically to Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, for the campus and larger Rio Grande Valley community—with a series we titled “Nuestra Gloria: CMAS Celebrates the 30th Anniversary of the Publication of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.”

Boot camp–style teacher workshops to incorporate hands‐on activities in agricultural sciences

AbstractFood security is one of the most pressing concerns of our times. Despite the vast opportunities, there is a shortage of skilled professionals in the food, agriculture, and plant sciences. Although most programs focused on addressing this concern have targeted students, we have often overlooked another critical group—the teachers. To address this issue, we recruited high school teachers from the Pharr–San Juan–Alamo Independent School District (PSJA‐ISD) in South Texas to participate in a workshop at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) and fostered their agricultural knowledge through boot camp–style intensive training by faculty members in food, agriculture, and plant sciences. Through this project, we seek to indirectly educate nearly 2,000 high school students and use these lesson plans as models for undergraduate education. Results from the teacher and student assistant evaluations show that our workshop structure and design is effective in serving the objectives and instigating interest among teachers who plan to incorporate these into their lesson plans. Student assistants involved in the project also describe it as an opportunity to improve their teaching and public speaking skills. Taken together, we suggest that in addition to planning student‐centered activities, the teacher‐centered activities should also take the center stage in our fight for better food security.

Community-Engaged Lifestyle Medicine as a Framework for Health Equity: Principles for Lifestyle Medicine in Low-Resource Settings.

Lifestyle risk factors, including tobacco and alcohol use, poor nutrition, and inactivity, comprise the leading actual causes of death and disproportionately affect diverse, lower-income and vulnerable populations. Fundamentally influenced by social determinants of health (including poverty, social linkages, food access, and built environment), these "unhealthy lifestyle" exposures perpetuate and sustain disparities in health outcomes, stealing years of healthy and productive life for minority, vulnerable groups. The authors call for implementation of a health equity framework within lifestyle medicine (LM). Community-engaged lifestyle medicine (CELM) is an evidence-based, participatory framework capable of addressing health disparities through LM, targeting health equity in addition to better health. CELM was developed in 2015 by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) Preventive Medicine Residency program to address lifestyle-related health disparities within marginalized border communities. The framework includes the following evidence-based principles: community engagement, cultural competency, and application of multilevel and intersectoral approaches. The rationale for each of these components and the growth of CELM within the American College of Lifestyle Medicine is described. Finally, illustrative examples are provided for how CELM can be instituted at micro and macro levels by LM practitioners.

Soliton–cnoidal interactional wave solutions for the reduced Maxwell–Bloch equations**Project supported by the Global Change Research Program of China (Grant No. 2015CB953904), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11675054 and 11435005), the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Cultivation Plan of Action (Grant No. YB2016039), and Shanghai Collaborative Innovation Center of Trustworthy Software for Internet of Things (Grant No. ZF1213). Some

In this paper, we study soliton–cnoidal wave solutions for the reduced Maxwell–Bloch equations. The truncated Painlevé analysis is utilized to generate a consistent Riccati expansion, which leads to solving the reduced Maxwell–Bloch equations with solitary wave, cnoidal periodic wave, and soliton–cnoidal interactional wave solutions in an explicit form. Particularly, the soliton–cnoidal interactional wave solution is obtained for the first time for the reduced Maxwell–Bloch equations. Finally, we present some figures to show properties of the explicit soliton–cnoidal interactional wave solutions as well as some new dynamical phenomena.

Interprofessional Care in a University School of Medicine: How did we do that? / Atención Interprofesional en una Escuela Universitaria de Medicina: ¿Cómo lo hacemos?

Background: The Rio Grande Valley (RGV) located in South Texas has some of the highest rates of diabetes, obesity and poverty in the United States. The mission of the newly formed University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) School of Medicine (SOM) is to improve access to healthcare, diminish health disparities, and to provide quality, evidence-based compassionate care to South Texas. The SOM is unique in regards to its curriculum, research, and service due to its interprofessional education and care as major tenets. In support of the latter, the Dean has assigned a Senior Associate Dean for Interprofessional Education (IPE), whose mission includes the management of a longitudinal and developmental curriculum that runs from matriculation through graduate medical education. Interprofessional collaboration is one of the SOM’s initiatives to solve fragmented care, redundancy or lack of services, poor access to healthcare, and inadequate growth of the healthcare force. VIDAS, (Valley Interprofessional Development And Services), initially funded to develop a sustainable model of care, serves to unite the region by building a consortium as an integrated interprofessional collaborative intended to maximize resources in order to provide care for our most vulnerable members of the community. South Texas Integrated Team Collaborative for Health (STITCH)is the amalgamation of interprofessional resources that leads this change. STITCH if formed from clinical, research, leadership, and administrative members of organizations centered throughout South Texas, but includes state and national members. Purpose: Through VIDAS and STITCH, we have started two key interprofessional projects. The first is a clinic for adolescents aged 12 years through 18 years who are triply diagnosed with a medical illness, mental illness and appetitive drive disorders. The second project is to provide a sustainable model of care for Colonias, unincorporated communities often without any resources and rife with poverty and illness. Resources of the STITCH have combined to plan, execute and

New Medical School Hopes to Address Community’s Mental Health Needs

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Education and TrainingFull AccessNew Medical School Hopes to Address Community’s Mental Health NeedsEve BenderEve BenderSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:2 Jun 2015https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2015.5b20AbstractPsychiatrist Francisco Fernandez, M.D., the first dean of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine and a recent recipient of the National Hispanic Medical Association’s Physician of the Year Award, describes his hopes for the new school.Francisco Fernandez, M.D., has a vision that one day the Rio Grande Valley at the southernmost tip of Texas will not only shake its reputation as one of the sickest regions in the nation—known for its staggering obesity and diabetes rates affecting a mostly Mexican-American population—but also become one of the healthiest places in the United States.For his contributions to the health of Hispanic communities, Francisco Fernandez, M.D., was named Physician of the Year at the National Hispanic Medical Association’s (NHMA) Leadership Awards Gala in March. Fernandez, who is the founding dean of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, is flanked by Elena Rios, M.D. (left), president and CEO of the NHMA, and Sam Arce, M.D., chair of the NHMA board of directors.Justin RamirezFernandez is the inaugural dean and vice president for health affairs at the newly established University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) School of Medicine. He is also a professor of psychiatry.Prior to accepting his new post, Fernandez spent 12 years as the chair of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences and a professor of community and family health at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine in Tampa, Fla.Fernandez recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to accept the National Hispanic Medical Association’s (NHMA) Physician of the Year Award to a standing ovation at the organization’s 19th Annual Leadership Awards Gala. The NHMA is a nonprofit association based in Washington, D.C., that represents the interests of about 50,000 licensed Hispanic physicians in the United States. “We presented the award to Dr. Fernandez based on his longstanding career as an academic physician, [his accomplishments as] the third Hispanic dean of a medical school on the U.S. mainland,” and his leadership in creating a medical school in the Rio Grande Valley that will enhance care of many Hispanics, NMHA President and CEO Elena Rios, M.D., M.S.P.H., told Psychiatric News. Fernandez told Psychiatric News that he values his years of membership and work with the NHMA. “So many people here have been enormously supportive of my work in HIV and have served as role models for me,” he noted. The coming months will be filled with activity related to the startup of the medical school, including a site visit by the Liaison Committee of Medical Education, the organization responsible for granting accreditation status to the school. Once approval is granted, the first medical school class could matriculate as early as the summer of 2016. Fernandez will also work with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education to obtain accreditation for the school’s residency programs. Part of the mission for UTRGV, Fernandez said, will be to find solutions to the area’s health problems, which include drug and alcohol dependence, depression, degenerative disorders, and domestic violence in addition to complications related to obesity. He noted that the area’s residents are poor and largely underserved in terms of access to health services.He also noted that all those involved in the existing Rio Grande Valley academic community, including students, staff, and educators, “define community engagement in their actions and carry the mission of the medical school in their hearts day in and day out.” ■ ISSUES NewArchived